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Mythscapes: Memory, mythology, and national identity
The British Journal of Sociology
Abstract
In this paper I seek to challenge the dominant modes of conceiving the relationship between memory and national identity, and in so doing offer analysts of nationalism an improved understanding of the dynamics of national identity formation. The concept of collective memory is invoked regularly in attempts to explain the pervasiveness and power of nationalism. I argue that the concept is misused routinely in this context, and instead I employ a 'social agency' approach to theorizing, whereby memory is conceived in a more limited and cogent manner. I argue that it is important to distinguish clearly between memory and mythology, both of which are essential to understanding national identity, for not only are the two concepts distinct, they can also act in opposition to each other. Following from this I introduce the notion of a 'mythscape', the temporally and spatially extended discursive realm in which the myths of the nation are forged, transmitted, negotiated, and reconstructed constantly. Through employing the idea of a mythscape we can relate memory and mythology to each other in a theoretically profitable way.
... In addition, understanding how historical memory influences the formation of national identity is relevant not only from the point of view of scientific interest, but also for the purpose of forming a powerful and effective state policy in the field of humanities. (1,2,3) Modern scholars have identified a strong connection between history and the formation of collective memory as a factor in the formation of national identity. (4,5,6) These studies reveal a strong connection between knowledge of the past and the formation of a stable self-identity. ...
... (2) Besides, contemporary scholars have determined that history plays a significant role in public and political life. (3,4) Z. Wang described the key difficulties in using historical memory as a variable for study in the social sciences. ...
... For this reason, two main conceptual figures were made: figure 2 deals with the general conceptual works on https://doi.org/10.56294/sctconf2025682 3 Halukha L, et al the peculiarities of the formation of historical memory and national consciousness, while Figure 3 deals with the works that study the formation of historical memory in the context of Ukrainian realities. After that, the selected data were synthesized and generalized. ...
Introduction: The formation of historical memory in modern Ukraine is an important stage in the fight against Russian aggression, which has both military and ideological components. Objective: The purpose of the article is to analyse the role of historical memory in the formation of national identity (in the example of the Ukrainian experience). Methods: The study is based on the PRISMA approach. The criteria for including literature were based on content, thematic relevance, and methodology. The languages of the literature are English and Ukrainian. A total of 50 items were selected. We used software such as Excel and VOSviewer to create graphs and tables. The methods of comparative analysis and synthesis were used in the study. Results: An important aspect of contemporary historical memory in Ukraine is the appeal to key historical markers that have a significant impact on the formation of national consciousness. Russian aggression has generated a demand for Ukrainian historical symbols and narratives that influence national identity through public relations channels. Conflict is important, and it can lead to a conflict of “memories” that is reinforced by certain political speculations. At the same time, addressing historical issues in political debates (politicisation of historical memory) and the lack of a generalised national narrative on the history of Ukraine are urgent challenges to the further influence of historical memory on the consolidation of Ukrainians. Conclusions: Historical memory is an important tool for overcoming the spread of Russian propaganda, which openly spreads myths about the revival of the Soviet empire
... Myths often create memories of the place and play a significant role in constructing and reinforcing Newari identities. Within the traditional Newar country of Patan, the governing myth that shaped its identity as the "city of artisan" or "city of fine arts" often co-exists with subaltern myths that reinforce or contest the narrative constructed by the governing myth of Patan (See Bell, 2003). These myths collectively shape destination identities that reflect the values and belief systems of the autochthonous Newar from the place. ...
Indigenous peoples have unique worldviews and ways of things that emerged from their historical experiences with nature and their social surroundings. These experiences are constructed and orally transmitted through myths and folklore. This chapter examines the symbolism and language performativity inherent in Indigenous cultural imagination to show how a sustained choreography of Indigenous people’s mythic symbolism constructs an Indigenous destination image and identity. By scaffolding on Lévi-Strauss’s Mythopoeic imagination and Austin’s concept of performativity from language theory, this chapter draws insights from various myths of Nepal’s Indigenous Newars to discuss the magical and authentic choreographs and experiences these myths create for tourists and the image and identity they create for the place as destination.
... Public memory and national myth-making serve as crucial components in constructing origin stories that shape national identity (Bell 2003). While ostensibly these narratives can foster social cohesion, they often do so at the cost of homogenising diverse experiences and histories, even resulting in strategic forgetting and marginalisation of certain groups (Errera & Deluliis 2023). ...
... In the current Tintagel Castle Guidebook, Jeremy Ashbee states, "if you're going to understand Tintagel, only telling the historical story is a very bad error, and it would be just as bad if we only told the mythical story" (Goskar, 2016). Nevertheless, as Bell (2003) states, myths do not simply evolve unguided (p. 7). That is exactly correct. ...
This paper examines the key construct of an identity through images by looking at monuments and sculptures of pictorial representations within cultural heritage, by using the partial defacement of the recent construct Merlin statue by the organisation English Heritage at Tintagel Castle in May 2016, which was the first part of their Visitor Improvement Project.
Through examining previous acts of iconoclasm and the motives such as the Bamiyan Buddhas and the Pentascosa Rock art, this paper has compared the similarities behind the motives, such as an obtrusion of a cultural identity and the question over ownership of the object or site. In addition, personal observation including the author’s companion, have been made based on fieldwork taken in August 11th, 2016 at Tintagel Castle in order to gain some personal insight.
Through examining three viewpoints based on the issues and themes surrounding iconoclasm, such as authenticity and identity, heritage management, and lastly, the aesthetic experience through rock art, one has been able to create a critical evaluation on all three viewpoints within the paper. Through the concept of nationalism, the paper has been able to exemplify the motivations behind these iconoclastic acts, such as concern over ownership within the sector, and English Heritage’s previous protests by Cornish protest groups, who have objected previously against the organisation in the past.
By examining the planning application, previous visitor numbers, and the commercialism of Tintagel Castle and through briefly examining the concept of authenticity with regards to the Cornish-English divide, this paper has determined that the construction of such tangible objects within the heritage sector represents an obtrusion of an ideological sense of a cultural identity, hence why these vandalistic acts occur.
... 'Invented traditions' (Hobsbawm, 2012: 1), for example, articulate a connection or continuity with a suitable, often distant past, although they may be recent creations. A 'governing myth' or hegemonic national narrative can emerge from a 'mythscape' (Bell, 2003), a discursive realm in which interplay and contestations between myths and living memories constantly take place. Here, mnemonic interpretations of recent events feed into the national myths that emerge from the mythscape. ...
... Для иллюстрации того, как остаются в памяти именно знаковые события, можно использовать образ конуса «воронки», который втягивает в себя траектории эволюции представлений о прошлом, и вспомнить о концепте «мифоландшафт» Д. Белла (Bell, 2003). При этом у каждой сферы общественной жизни есть свои «мифоландшафты», зависящие от страны. ...
Cancel culture, which has recently emerged as a significant aspect of the intellectual life of the West, possesses a broader historical context that aligns with the techniques and forms of Oblivion outlined by Aleida Assmann. The evolution of this form of ostracism is illustrated through the lens of elite sports – from the instances involving the USSR during the Cold War to recent events concerning the Russian Federation, where the decline of international competitions requires administrative decisions. Historically, cancelling in sports can be traced back to boycotts, a practice representing the act of ignoring as a technique of oblivion; however, it has now evolved into a complex network of varied actors, practices, and intricate relationships. Through content analysis of both Russian and Western publications, the primary actors have been identified – the international organizations, governments of participating and organizing countries, athletes, and fans – and their reactions during instances of boycotts, restrictions on the use of national symbols, requirements for neutral status were examined. Special emphasis was placed on the forms of negative oblivion that became prevalent at the beginning of XXIst century amidst doping scandals and geopolitical confrontation. Illustrative cases of selective oblivion, particularly those concerning the Soviet sports legacy, such as the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, support the potential of employing the concept of mythscape. It is noted that contemporary professional sports serve as a particularly revealing arena for the manifestation of cancel culture practices, which have significant effects in the political, economic and social spheres. The conclusions drawn indicate the dominance of unprecedented sports policy globally, resulting in fundamental changes both in the nature of major sports (including the erosion of the Olympic movement) and in the frameworks for organizing significant tournaments.
... The Gujaratis were installed as the small shopkeeper class (as in England too, according to 32 Dyer and James (2023). 33 Ali (1980), p 14;Gillion (1977), p 1; Lal (1993), p 189; Luker (2005), pp 360, 367; Singh (n.d.), p 23. 34 Bell (2003). Amarjit Chandan 35 ) and were one of the few groups to reach Fiji as free settlers in the early decades of the twentieth century, along with the Punjabis. ...
The aim of this article is to look at the Indigenous Fijian village system and its mythical link to the first Fijians who arrived in the islands at Vuda Point, Western Viti Levu, to explain the identity of the Indigenous Fijian as ‘villager’, an identity that is paramount over all others. I also compare European and Indigenous understandings of knowledge and of property law. Louis Althusser’s Marxist arguments might suggest that the village is cultural superstructure to the town’s economic base. Prodevelopment logic tries to put forward a view that moral/spiritual attitudes to land are no more valid than modern/pragmatic/economic attitudes. The Indigenous belief that the village system is spiritual tends to inadvertently play into this logic. The answer may lie in Foucault’s call to decenter the subject meaning being extremely flexible, adaptable and tricky so as to avoid easy categorization and marginalization. ‘Playing with’ Western categories and treating the town as a foreign country used for casual drinking sessions may well be part of this. This attitude allows for town-power to be subverted and village sanctity to be maintained in something of a win-win situation in the face of marginalization by corporate logic.
... In this context, the discursive approach correlates with the narrative perspective in the study of identities, with the representation of the historical, social, and political myths as texts -encoded mythological messages (William, 2000), the set of which forms myth spaces, "in which different myth communities are created and contested" (Bell, 2003). An important concept to consider is Smith's (2006, 335) theory on the significance of ethnic symbols, myths, values, and traditions in the formation and self-reproduction of nations, with subsequent adaptation of what nations consider their past through its repeated discovery, authentication, and appropriation of aspects (Smith, 2001, 83-85), which play a crucial role in shaping national identity. ...
... The starting point for making this connection is to recognise that nationalism, both as an ideology and as a form of political praxis, is rooted in the development of historical representations of shared narratives (Bell 2003). But not all historical narratives are created equal. ...
In this paper, I examine the relationship between community-level exposure to war losses and long-term patterns of electoral behaviour. Using novel data that identifies and geolocates all French soldiers who died during World War I, I show that communities that experienced higher death rates exhibit greater levels of electoral support for the far-right. Subsequently, I provide both theoretical and empirical evidence on how such persistent effects propagate: communities more exposed to the horrors of war develop stronger in-group preferences at the expense of the out-group. In cases like France, where the in-group is defined primarily in terms of the nation, this preference translates into a higher demand for nationalism, which is supplied by far-right political parties.
... past. Duncan Bell discusses the politics of identity in terms of its role in establishing the rhetoric of traumatic past (Bell 2003). He highlights the connection between trauma and identity and their role in understanding the past. ...
Contemporary Pakistani poets including Harris Khalique, Rizwan Akhter and Imtiaz Dharker in the last two decades (2001-20) have translated the event of 9/11 and its offshoots into individual, communal, public, prosthetic and transcultural memories of violence, and determined their own paths to manage the turmoil different from the one witnessed by the post-9/11 American poets. This research negotiates with the poetics and politics of difference while highlighting the polyphonic aesthetic structures of (post)9/11- memory in Pakistani poetry. It entwines trauma, memory, and cultural studies, and scaffolds its argument upon the thematic concerns of the selected Pakistani poetry around the four concepts of public fantasy, communal memory, identity displacement, and transculturality. Squaring the theoretical canvas, it traces the repercussions of 9/11 beyond trauma in prosthetic contexts. It further maps how natal alienation – a disconnection of historical memory from the cultural context – not only augments mnemohistory in subjectivity but is also indelible in influencing social, political, and territorial contexts of analogical 9/11 memory. This way, this study will contribute to the understanding of forms of memory and thematic concerns of post-9/11 Pakistani English poetry. Here, unlike Marianne Hirsh’s use of the term in the context of intergenerational memory, the parenthesized ‘post’ of ‘(post)memory’ refers to the space where my research engages with memory studies theoretically on the rhetoric of difference through which poets construct post-9/11 poetic memorials in Pakistan. In other words, within the canvas of this research, the parenthesized ‘(post)’ provides theoretical space to the diversity of Pakistani poetic voices to 9/11 and its offshoots.
... The term is derived from the works of Nora (1989) and Bell (2003), which refer to the discursive realm of the memory site. In this research, both traditional and non-traditional museums are used as research sites interchangeably referred to as "museums" and "memoryscapes." ...
This thesis explores "locality "and its role in national identity construction. By taking the post-structuralist approach, more specifically, Roxanne Doty's agent-structure conceptualizations and representational practices in constructing identity, this research aims to examine the contribution of the locality to national identity. The research focuses on the representational practices of modernization, local elites, and socialist history in Shanghai's memoryscape. The following four research sites are used in this research: the China Art Museum, Shanghai History Museum, Sihang Warehouse Battle Memorial, and Site of the First National Congress of CPC. Primary source data was gathered from their permanent collections, and my analysis is rooted in the application of qualitative content analysis and case study methods. Socialism acted as the dominant signifier, sticking to itself with several other meanings, i.e., patriotism and national salvation. Searching for the roots of modernization and socialist history was equally apparent. In contrast, modernization represented the present through past achievements, while socialist representation mainly focused on the past to frame Shanghai's red cultural roots.
本论文探讨了“地方性”及其在国家认同建构中的角色。研究旨在通过采用后结构主义的方法，特别是Roxanne Doty的代理-结构问题和身份建构中的表征实践，概念化地方对国家认同的贡献。研究聚焦于现代化、地方精英和上海记忆景观中的社会主义历史表征实践。研究发现，社会主义作为主要的符号，与爱国主义和民族救亡等多重意义紧密相
连。现代化和社会主义历史的根源在上海的记忆景观中体现得同样明显。现代化通过过去的成就代表现在，而社会主义表征主要聚焦于过去，以框定上海的红色文化根源。
... Nationhood can bring about a sense of alterity. However, alterity only exists after a sense of belonging has been established (Bell, 2003). Orienting one's gaze toward those who are deemed outside of one's community of belonging and establishing a sense of alterity results in seeing the Other less holistically and more as an objectified entity (Buber, 1996). ...
... However, returning to the concept of "mythscape" suggested by Bell (2003), it should be noted that the governing myths of nations, whatever their stability, are incessantly subjected to debate, contestation, and subversion, in particular when a previously excluded national population forces its own writing upon history. The political mediation of the legacies of imperial power is conditioned by the migrant flow from the former colonies to Portugal and becomes prominent in the tensions and ambivalences that characterize the relationship between the white Portuguese population and the populations that came from Portugal's former colonies and their descendants. ...
The entire experience of modern imperialism has profoundly shaped European national identities in ways that continue to matter in postimperial times. This is also true of Portugal; as the first and the most enduring of the European colonial empires, its end did not erase the self-image of the country as an imperial nation. Although refashioned in a matter of style and content, major public representations of the nation’s collective identity remain anchored in the memory of empire. This official memory combines a strong emphasis on the period of the “Maritime Discoveries” with the represen-tation of Portugal as the pioneer of cultural dialogue on a global scale and of the Portuguese as “inventors” of the modern world. In this article, I will address some examples of the way in which Portugal’s imperial history has been memorialized to convey the country’s “brand image,” for the purposes of both identity politics and the tourism industry. KEYWORDS: public memory, Portuguese empire, nationalism, cosmopolitanism, commodification RESUMO: Toda a experiência do imperialismo moderno moldou profundamente as iden-tidades nacionais europeias de maneiras que continuam a ser importantes nos tempos pós-imperiais. Este também é o caso de Portugal: sendo o primeiro e o mais duradouro império colonial europeu, o seu fim não apagou a auto-imagem do país como nação imperial. Embora remodelada em termos de estilo e conteúdo, as principais representa-ções públicas da identidade coletiva da nação permanecem ancoradas na memória do império. Esta memória oficial combina uma forte ênfase no período das “Descobertas Marítimas” com a representação de Portugal como pioneiro do diálogo cultural à escala global e dos portugueses como “inventores” do mundo moderno. Neste artigo, aborda-rei alguns casos através dos quais a história imperial de Portugal foi memorializada para transmitir uma “imagem de marca” de Portugal, tanto para as políticas da identidade quanto para a indústria do turismo. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: memória pública, Império Português, nacionalismo, cosmopolitismo, comodificação
... Mythologists use this term to signify their studies on certain products of the imagination of a people, which takes the form of tales [2] as humans use these mythological tales, along with rituals, to establish a sense of community and identity [3]. Therefore, the dominant modes of conceiving the relationship between memory and national identity could be revealed in mythology [4] if approached scientifically, offering a supplemental approach for analysis of nationalism and/or a nation's cultural identity. ...
The main source of mythology is oral communication, lacking documentation or first-hand sources, which leads most sinologists to look away from ancient Chinese myths simply for the credibility of their Chinese studies. However, myths are still being told today, manifesting themselves as a living tradition, passed on from the ancestors to the future generations across various modern contexts. Only in this living tradition can we trace the spiritual link between the current China and its previous phrases, especially the primitive stage. This paper serves to provide the succinct English translations of representative Chinese mythical narratives, organized in accordance with the anthropological line of reasoning about the social development from pre-tribal society to urban civilization. More importantly, combining theoretical frameworks across disciplines, this paper proposes a mythological approach, with the caveat of its limitation, to the early civilization of China, and explores the cultural origin of the Han Chinese, which is deemed the backbone of today's Chinese nation. Taking this approach, an overview is provided to underscore the comprehensive reasoning of social development at the primitive stage, and reveal that ancient myths, alongside early religious activities, induced by material needs for survival and development, lead to cultural Review Article 149 and ideological outcomes, which are then utilized as the foundation of a nation's cultural identity and nationalism through historicization and politically motivated interpretations. Such efforts are supposed to be a valuable addition to both Sinology and cultural anthropology, especially in the context of East Asia. Extending the overview, directions for future scholarly endeavors are suggested.
... Recent work in ontological security studies points to the importance of paying attention to whose ontological security is being discussed and the ethical aspects related to how the national self is often being constructed in ways that foreclose contestation ( Mälksoo 2015 ;Browning and Joenniemi 2017 ;Kinnvall, Manners, and Mitzen 2018 ;Kinnvall and Mitzen 2020 ). Indeed, as Bell (2003 ) suggests, the construction of collective memory is a form of myth-making. While domestic contestation over collective memory, or different myths about the nation's past, is a key aspect of domestic memory politics (with memory laws playing a central role also in the domestic deterrence of contesting accounts, for example), our main focus in this article is on the international dimensions of memory-political deterrence. ...
Traditionally used within the context of hard military power in interstate relations, the concept of deterrence has been progressively extended to non-state actors and new issue areas. While scholarship on the social aspects of deterrence has expanded our understanding of this core international security practice, the focus of existing research has largely remained on physical security. This article argues that there is a phenomenon in international politics that can be called memory-political deterrence. Memory-political deterrence refers to the ways in which states seek to dissuade other political actors from taking actions that threaten the collective memory narratives that underpin the ontological security of the deterring actor. Memory-political deterrence works, for example, through political rhetoric, declarations, diplomatic insults, commemorative practices, and punitive memory laws. We illustrate the article’s arguments through empirical examples from Russia’s and China’s recent memory-political deterrence efforts toward Ukraine and Japan, respectively. In doing so, we elucidate the ways in which memory politics is intertwined with geopolitics, underpinning wider world-ordering aspirations.
... "The specific case of the question of evil represents, by antonomasia, the tragic dimension of existence, insofar as, as Ricoeur tirelessly reiterates, evil demonstrates not only that the theoretical answer is always incomplete and approximate, but, more than that, evil forces us to find other modes of relationship than just the strictly theoretical ones, demanding a commitment to effective action"[23, p. 67].4 "Neither the work of remembrance nor the duty of remembrance can be carried out without another work, the work of mourning. Mourning is different from lamentation. ...
The purpose of this paper is to analyse a particularly influential case of memory continuity in Portugal, that of Padrão dos Descobrimentos. Spaces of collective memory (such as public monuments) raise questions about what we celebrate, remember or rescue from oblivion, providing an opportunity to rethink the trauma. As such, care for public spaces is associated with ethical and cultural values. One of the difficulties with certain monuments has to do with the fact that they recall actions that today we see as traumatic acts. Thus, it is important to reflect on a critical use of memory. On August 8, 2021, Padrão dos Descobrimentos was the subject of a graffiti. One of the sides of the monument could read: “Blindly sailing for money, humanity is drowning in a scarlet sea”. A great controversy immediately arose around the meaning of this gesture, as well as the role played by a monument that, after being temporarily built in 1940 for the Portuguese World Exhibition, was, in its current version, inaugurated in 1960, on the occasion of the fifth centenary of the death of Infante D. Henrique. This episode reignited a deeper cleavage around the uses of history and memory, the Portuguese colonial past, and the role of the Padrão dos Descobrimentos as an instrument for the reproduction of nationalism. In this sense, and with the authors proposing a new theoretical frame of reference based on the thought of Arendt and Ricoeur, its critical reading becomes relevant.
... If you were not there, Bell says, then you don't remember it. Bell (2003) introduces a social agency approach which keeps collective remembrance and mythscapes as separate things, which means that it is then possible to contest the dominant narrative or governing myth of the nation, group, or community. While, in practice, there may be common elements between collective remembrance and the mythscape, it is important to remember that these things are conceptually distinct. ...
Because it has been integral to the history and marketing of Bandung death metal, the satellite town of Ujung Berung aka Ujungbronx, in Bandung’s outer southeastern suburbs, has become a revered and romanticized myth throughout all of Indonesia’s underground scenes. The Indonesian underground constitutes the mythscape or page where alternative myths are promulgated, expanded, debated, opposed, or reimagined. While the governing myth of Ujung Berung scene as paramount is widely accepted in West Java province, it is accepted somewhat
reluctantly, and with mild criticism, in the East Javanese and Jogjakarta scenes. However, in Surabaya, there is a recognition that the moment when the governing myth could have been overthrown, at least within East Java, is long past. History belongs to the victors.
... While, in practice, there may be common elements between collective remembrance and the mythscape, it is important to remember that these things are distinct. The mythscape is defined here as the "page" (Bell, 2003, p. 66) on which alternative myths fight out the battle for ascendency and dominance. A governing myth cannot be so readily challenged if it is presented only as a (reified) collective memory. ...
This paper exists as a call for decolonizing methodologies and the reversal of colonial logic. Drawing in part on my own ethnographic research on soccer in the Fiji Islands and popular music and society in Indonesia, I explain how local participants and supporters can and should be encouraged to operate as co-interviewers and co-researchers so that the project has an Indigenous flavour and orientation and functions in terms of Indigenous understandings of relationships, practices and values. I look at how Indigenous myths, often subaltern myths, exist within a mythscape where the governing myth is usually the inherited myth of the colonial power. Subaltern myths and Indigenous ways of knowing combine and I try to illustrate how they differ from European knowledge through the example of the results of a soccer match. Wins against white imperialistic countries enter myth status, while losses are willfully forgotten, and refused entry into the mythscape. A loss that reinforces white European dominance is redundant in the wider scheme of things. It tells us nothing new nor does it empower.
... En la misma línea de confusión, Boyd (2008: 13) señala que «'Historia' y 'Memoria' son términos que a menudo se utilizan indistintamente en el discurso popular» 3 . Y todo ello a pesar de un cuerpo de literatura creciente cuyo propósito es conseguir su distinción (Halbwachs, 1997;Le Goff, 1992;Bell, 2003). Así pues, introducimos una breve definición sobre qué entendemos por memoria, pues con respecto a la historia existe un amplio consenso en considerarla una disciplina científica encargada del estudio y la narración cronológica de acontecimientos pasados. ...
En pleno centro de la ciudad de Tarragona conviven dos recordatorios de la muerte de Juan Gabriel Rodrigo Knafo, que tuvo lugar durante la manifestación habida en protesta por los hechos ocurridos el 3 de marzo de 1976 y en que murieron cinco trabajadores que participaban en una asamblea obrera en Vitoria. Uno, en su Rambla Nova; el otro, en una de sus céntricas calles. No obstante, la diferencia estriba en su procedencia: el primero, erigido por las instituciones públicas, en este caso el Ayuntamiento; el segundo, por los familiares. Sin embargo, no son los monumentos más visitados ni se recuerdan estos luctuosos hechos en las efemérides locales de la población, así como tampoco se hace especial mención a la condición obrera del difunto. En este sentido, nuestro objetivo es situar dónde queda la memoria del obrerismo en nuestras modernas sociedades y qué hemos perdido con su ocultación, cuando no indiferencia. Esta situación, más habitual de lo que pudiera suponerse, y que se ha registrado en otras poblaciones europeas, nos provoca una reflexión sobre la diferencia entre memoria e historia, así como también sobre el papel actual de la memoria obrera, al tiempo que propone una discusión sobre su papel y su lugar entre nuestras tradiciones profesionales. En este sentido, la hipótesis que se plantea tiene que ver con explicar un hecho más habitual de lo que se puede imaginar, como es la existencia de una nítida separación entre la memoria obrera, en términos colectivos, según Halbwachs (1997), y el uso que se hace desde las instituciones públicas de la historia. Esta cuestión de falta de memoria ha adquirido mayor relevancia dentro de las sociedades que han sufrido dictaduras en el siglo xx, como es el caso de España, si bien, y tristemente, no ha sido el único en nuestro entorno geográfico más cercano.
... İnsanların ortak düşünce şablonu üretmesindeki yönelime açıklık getiren milliyetçi söylem, duygusal şemalarla beraber, mit-sembol ve iletişimin ortaya çıktığı söylem kompleksinde belirmektedir (Calhoun, 1997;Smith, 2009, s. 24 (Achard, 1998, s. 194-195 için de önemlidir (Bell, 2003 (Calhoun, 1997: Scruton, 2007 This article examines the view of these propaganda works in June, July, and August 2022 on the Türkgün's website. In this newspaper, only the news containing political discourse and the 2023 theme were selected and photo news, video news, and routine news were eliminated. ...
2023 yılı, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’nin kuruluşunun 100. yılı olması ve Cumhurbaşkanlığı seçimleri başta olmak üzere kritik öneme sahip siyasi seçimleri içermesi açısından Türkiye için özel bir yıldır. Son yıllarda sık kullanılan popülerleşmiş siyasi kavramlardan biri olan “2023 yılı” ifadesi siyasiler tarafından çeşitli şekillerde kullanılmaktadır. Cumhur İttifakının da merkezi temalarından birisi olan 2023, siyasi konjonktürde tarihi bir eşik olarak kabul edilmektedir. Milliyetçiliğin yeniden tahayyülüne, mitsel olanın hakikatle ilişkisine ve siyasi koalisyonun güçlenmesine aracılık eden, siyasal talebin söylem alanındaki karşılığı olan 2023, adeta annus mirabilis (mucizevi yıl) olarak düşünülmektedir. Bu çalışma, milliyetçi politik aktörlerin söyleminde 2023’ün çerçevelenme yöntemini ve milliyetçi ideallerin 2023 eksenindeki detayları irdelemeyi amaçlamaktadır. Bu bağlamda, Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi’nin (MHP) yayın organı olan Türkgün gazetesinin internet sitesinde yer alan 2023 ile ilgili haberler, milliyetçi söylemdeki izdüşümler üzerinden analiz edilecektir. Böylece, milliyetçi söylemde 2023’ün hangi tema ve kodlarla çerçevelendiği ortaya çıkarılacaktır. Makale, milliyetçi politik aktörlerin söyleminde 2023 temasının birleştirici bir bağ, ortak gelecek inşası ve mitsel detaylarla inşa edildiğini ortaya koymaktadır. Söz konusu bulgular, ferasetli Türk milleti, tarihsel bellek, politik kahraman, mucizevi gelecek ve ötekinin inşası alt başlıkları altında kategorilendirilecek ve Wodak’ın söylem analizi yöntemi çerçevesinde incelenecektir.
This paper aims to investigate the significance of the Brothers Grimm’s Deutsche Sagen as a valuable analytical tool for studying issues related to literature, history, and customs across different cultures and epochs. The paper focuses on nineteenth century German nationalism, examined through the lens of anthropological and literary genre studies. Building on a methodological framework that stems from André Jolles’ considerations on the Sage as a literary genre, as well as from Duncan Bell’s concept of “mythscape,” the discussion will juxtapose the Germanic figure of Frau Holle, as depicted in the Grimmian collection of “legends,” with the phenomenon here defined as “Benandantism.” As for the research material, in addition to the outlined methodological tools and the Grimms’ Sagen, the corpus includes studies on the inquisitorial reports concerning the “benandanti” as first collected by Carlo Ginzburg. Ultimately, the purpose of this comparison is to highlight similarities that could indicate the perpetuation, in both myths, of specific memetic processes inherent to their respective cultures, thereby laying the groundwork for further research in this area.
En este trabajo argumento que los juegos Olímpicos modernos están fincados en mitos provenientes de la burguesía victoriana europea, quienes vieron en la apropiación de denominada "cultura clásica", la ocasión perfecta para universalizar sus ideales y valores burgueses, lo que hasta nuestros días ha significado una concepción del olimpismo en términos eurocéntricos, colonialistas e imperialistas. El primer mito que intento desmontar es el que identifica la función del olimpismo con la promoción de paz y armonía entre todos los pueblos. El segundo es el mito del maratón y en tercer lugar muestro que el proyecto olímpico de Coubertin en realidad estaba anidado en el proyecto pedagógico imperialista británico que veía en el deporte la ocasión perfecta para inculcar en los infantes el amateurismo, el respeto a las jerarquías y el orden, valores centrales para los intereses expansionistas británicos. Así pues, argumento que una mirada detenida sobre la gestación del olimpismo moderno en la obra de Coubertin es indispensable para retirar del deporte actual todos esos valores que promueven la exclusión, particularmente de los grupos subrepresentados.
Balkan toplumları arasında, Osmanlı Devleti’yle ilgili çok sayıda olumsuz anlatı ve mitler vardır. Osmanlı karşıtı anlatı ve mitler, siyasal ulusal bir kimlik oluşturulması amacıyla kurgulanmış ve bilinçli olarak Balkan uluslarının kolektif hafızasına yerleştirilmiştir. Çalışmada, bir Balkan ülkesi olan Hırvatistan’ın ulusal belleğinde yer alan Osmanlı-Türk imgesine ilişkin anlatılar ve mitler ele alınmıştır. Osmanlı Devleti, Hırvat topraklarının tamamına hükmetmemiş, nispeten kısa denebilecek bir süre Hırvatistan’ın doğu bölgesinde ve Dalmaçya kıyılarında yer alan belirli yerleri yönetimi altına almıştır. Buna rağmen Hırvat ulusal belleğinde, Osmanlı-Türk imgesi yoğun biçimde geleneksel kutlamalarda, halk edebiyatı ürünlerinde ve dinsel ritüellerde önemli bir yer işgal etmektedir. Bu kapsamda Hırvatistan’da geleneksel olarak yüzyıllarca kutlanagelen iki etkinlik incelenmiştir. Bu iki etkinlik Đurđevac (Curcevaç) ve Sinj (Sinye) kentlerinde gerçekleşmektedir. Etkinliklerin ortak özelliği, Osmanlı Devleti’ne karşı verilen mücadeleyi hayali öğelerden yola çıkarak bir anlatı ve mit haline gelmiş olmalarıdır. Ulus inşasında anlatı ve mitler, toplulukların ortak bir kimlik ve aidiyet duygusu geliştirmesinde etkin bir rol oynar. Anlatı ve mitler, bir ulusun kökenini, tarihini, kültürel değerlerini ve kahramanlarını yaratmada toplumu bir araya getirir, ayrıca ulusun tesis edilmesinde siyasi ve kültürel bir meşruiyet sağlar. Ulus inşasında anlatı ve mitler, tarihsel gerçeklikleri yüceltir, idealize eder ve çoğu zaman bunları çarpıtarak ortak bir bilinç yaratırlar. Çalışmada Đurđevac ve Sinj kentlerinde kutlanan iki etkinlik aracılığıyla Hırvat ulusunun yaratılması sürecinde anlatı ve mitlerin nasıl kurgulandığı açıklanmaya çalışılmıştır. Çalışma, nitel bir yaklaşım çerçevesinde tasarlanmış ve veri toplama sürecinde “durum çalışması” deseni takip edilmiştir.
Myths—symbolically dense narratives in wide cultural circulation that resist critical scrutiny—are often thought to be counterproductive to political discourse, but they are also ubiquitous in contemporary culture and society. Just two years apart, Jürgen Habermas and Hans Blumenberg developed contrasting visions of how we ought to respond to the myths in our society. By reconstructing their disagreement, this paper uncovers the distinctive challenge of balancing a commitment to political emancipation with the opacity of myths to critical reason. I argue for an alternative approach to myths than those in the theoretical mainstream, taking Blumenberg’s relatively neglected position as a starting point. Blumenberg invites us to pay closer attention to the cognitive needs that necessitate the generation of myths while simultaneously reminding us of our own creative agency to reinvent them.
This research study aims to address the oversight in previous studies that focused on constructing China’s image through the media without investigating how audiences perceive and interpret that depiction. This study aims to investigate how Chinese internet users perceive China’s self-image to understand Chinese citizens’ attitudes and reactions to political propaganda circulated by Chinese authorities online more effectively. To achieve this, we have chosen “This is China,” an online political program that presents China’s self-image. A total of 60,648 comments were collected and analyzed. For the analysis, T-LDA, Sentiment Analysis, and Semantic Network Analysis were employed. The study reveals six significant factors: Real-Life Stress, Patriotic Sentiment, Rational Emotion, Program Style, Presenter’s Public Persona, and Ironic Remarks, all of which shape the public’s perception of China’s image. Specifically, the study finds that Patriotism and Program Style have a positive influence on the audience’s perception, while the other factors hinder a favorable interpretation of the nation’s image.
Described in the Chinese Communist Party's orthodox historiography as a dark and repressive period and part of the “century of humiliation,” the Republican era has in recent decades undergone a significant reassessment in the People's Republic of China (PRC). In books, newspaper articles, documentaries and dramas, Republican China has sometimes been portrayed as a vibrant society making remarkable progress in modernization in the face of severe external challenges. This article explores the origins of this surprising rehabilitation and examines in detail how the Republican-era economic legacies have been reassessed in the reform era. It finds that while the post-Mao regime continues to use the negative view of China's pre-communist history to maintain its historical legitimacy, it has also been promoting a positive view of aspects of the same period in order to support its post-1978 priorities of modernization and nationalism, a trend that has persisted under Xi Jinping despite his tightened ideological control. The selective revival of Republican legacies, although conducive to the Party's current political objectives, has given rise to revisionist narratives that damage the hegemony of its orthodox historical discourses, on which its legitimacy still relies.
Why does contentious history play such an outsized role in some international relationships? Why do these “history wars” endure, overriding incentives to reconcile? Despite their demonstrable importance, history wars have generally been neglected by conventional conflict and security literature; and, while scholarship concerning the international politics of memory has expanded significantly, overarching frameworks addressing these questions remain underdeveloped. In this article, drawing on theories of memory politics, relational identity and ontological security, I analyze history wars as mnemonic encounters: sites at which national identities are constructed in relation to one another through remembering and forgetting shared history. Within such encounters, history wars may arise and persist where each side's mnemonic practices involve conflicting, negative representations of the other, and such representations constitute an important element of their national identities. This occurs because the rearticulation of conflictual representations constitutes both a means by which the national community is reproduced and a defense mechanism against the ontological threat posed by the other side's counter-constructions. Illustrating this framework, I explicate the construction and persistence of Japan and South Korea's “history problem,” drawing on extensive fieldwork and a discourse analysis of over one thousand original-language texts from both countries across politics, media and culture.
The Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol have not yet completed the process of reintegration today. In this context, it is necessary to pay attention to its political and psychological component — the problem of creating the Russian national-state identity. The political-psychological approach involves analyzing not only the rational aspects of this process but also the place of unconscious factors in it, including the symbolic space of identity. The study involved researchers from Sevastopol University who conducted a questionnaire survey comprising closed and open questions. The sample selected for the study represented two regions. Their survey included 2,100 respondents. The researchers identified elements such as the image of the territory, the idea of personalities with symbolic meaning, and historical symbols for the study.
The article examines the actual problem of falsification of political history and its "interpretations" by Anglo-Saxon authors. The authors demonstrate a comprehensive approach of a set of methods – from dialectics and gemeneutics to comparative studies and semiotics. The presented principles of dialectics allow us to identify the dynamics of the development of falsifications. The principles of comparative studies used in comparisons with historical facts help to expose falsification. The use of personalism data allows us to more accurately understand the personalities who participated in the falsification. The method of hermeneutics allows you to penetrate into the depth of the meaning of the text, through the disclosure of its true content, the problem of falsifications is represented by the scheme: incompetence-error-lie. The approaches of the US ruling elite to the interpretation of modern international events of political history in relations with Russia have been criticized. In relation to the English falsifiers of history, the authors distinguish two categories of memory: collective and collective. The nature of information wars in fakes and demagogic tricks is revealed. The purpose of further development of this topic is to develop and implement a number of events and "anti-fake" programs based on close interaction of the Russian media, which allow to rid the Russian community of the "weeds" of the Anglo-Saxon falsification of political history.
Zimbabwe’s ruling party, the Zimbabwe African National Union (Patriotic Front) (ZANU(PF)) has long used history-making to construct citizenship hierarchies. This chapter explores how the party’s control over the country’s official history has marginalized the Matabeleland region, doubly marked as Other, in political and ethnic terms. Drawing on interviews, secondary literature, and an analysis of high school history textbooks, the chapter reveals the varied, context-specific forms that othering has taken, and explores its effects in sustaining a sense of exclusion and second-class citizenship among members of Zimbabwe’s Ndebele-speaking minority. Further, discussing recent productions of public counter-histories, the chapter demonstrates how exclusionary state narratives can mobilize those who feel alienated by them and thus politicize the very histories and identities the state has attempted to silence or exclude.
This essay argues that the works of socially engaged art by Polish artists Joanna Rajkowska, Julita Wójcik have brought greater visibility to the contending issues of Polish mythscape, such as mnemonic erasure of Polish-Jewish past, intrinsic Catholicity, martyrology, and monism by invoking affective responses and fostering inter-subjectivity and thus supporting cultural Europeanization of Poland.
The aim of this reflection is to awaken the need for a revitalisation of symbolic civism through a hermeneutic of patriotic signifiers. In fact, the destruction of historical consciousness is what makes such a hermeneutic at the level of the self-impossible. That is to say, historical consciousness, the memory of a people, serves as a breeding ground for identity and should always be maintained. This being the case, any identity crisis would be the expression of a malaise: that of the loss of the feeling of belonging to the same historical consciousness. Indeed, there is a crisis of meaning when there is a conflict of interpretations. This conflict stems from the fact that the plurality of interpretations, far from contributing to creativity, generates uncivilisation. For people who once lived together, a hermeneutic of patriotic signifiers is needed as a solution that can contribute to the recovery of the feeling of continuity that is characteristic of all historical consciousness.
Political elites often use the nation’s past to construct the nation’s present identity. In his speeches about the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin frequently uses the Russian national myth of the Great Patriotic War to construct Russia’s present duties, values, and identity. Charges of neo-Nazism and fascism against Ukraine are made to construct the Russian national identity as one that fights proactively against Nazism. However, by using a myth set in the Soviet period, the status of Ukraine as either part of the Russian Self or constituting the foreign Other is highly ambiguous. Although cynical and deeply offensive, Putin’s use of Nazi imagery therefore has a purpose deeper than causing shock and offence.
This essay attempts to outline the genealogy of the ‘Korean’ theodicy of han. First it examines the qualities of secular theodicies giving an interpretation to people’s sufferings experienced as individuals or members of a nation. Then in parallel with the Nietzschean concept of ‘ressentiment’, discussed are the idiosyncrasies of han theodicy and its dynamics of being transformed from lamentations of victimhood to prescriptions of salvation.
Initially a state of individual psychology, the spirit of han proves to be plastic enough to find its way towards collective as well as individual affirmation. Then the theodicy of han tends to be shared and negotiated towards what Nietzsche has called a ‘slave revolt’. The essay concludes on the threshold of modernity the theodicy of han embarks on its career as ressentiment nationalism.
Keywords: han; modernity; ressentiment; suffering; theodicy
Black heritage is a notion actively propagated by both the state and public organizations in the United States of America in recent decades. It presupposes recognition of a fundamental contribution of natives of Africa and their descendants to the history of the country, its economy and culture. This volume is devoted to identifying factors that were and are crucial for the formation and transformation of the Black and White Americans’ historical memory of the role of Africans and their descendants in US history. The contributors to the volume study the connection of historical memory with representations of Black heritage in the state and public discourses of the United States in the context of the aggravation of the racial problem and the emergence of new radical forms of combatting white racism in the country in the mid-2010s – early 2020s.
The 2017 Catalan Independence Referendum prompted a historic resurgence of Spanish ‘centre’ nationalism. Such resurgence is indicative of a change in Spanish national identity as overt nationalism and is connotationally related to the Franco regime. This research focuses on the power and dissemination of newspaper narratives in the promotion and descriptions of such nationalism. Newspapers are discursively analysed to understand the decreasing reticence towards ‘centre’ nationalism in Spain, as evidenced by nationalist rhetoric and symbolism, and the significance of this change for the Spanish transition to democracy. It is found that the Catalan referendum inspired a strong counter‐reaction of dissociating centre‐periphery relations suggestive of pre‐democratic transition sentiments in the maintenance of the ‘centre’ as dominant and relegating the ‘periphery’ to its Franco‐era ‘threat’ status. Newspapers facilitated this shift in the nationalist narrative through their descriptions of the independence movement and the use of references and allusions to Spain's history and ‘near past.’
This chapter explores the idea that humane representations of refugees can be a matter of objectification (abstraction, use of standard discourses, stereotypes, othering, commodification), but that this is also intertwined with de-objectifying moments. In order to illustrate this, two instances of cultural production that belong to different genres were chosen for in-depth study. Both engage with the so-called refugee crisis of 2015 in Europe. They are the BBC/KEO television documentary Exodus—Our Journey to Europe (2016) which recounts the journeys of a group of refugees and migrants to Europe at that time, and a series of parliamentary debates about the issue of Syrian refugees that took place in the British parliament between 2013 and 2017. The specific focus of analysis is on the documentary as a memory artefact recounting the historic 2015 times, and on references to the past in parliamentarians’ interventions in debates. It is argued that the parameters of the specific genres involved, the television documentary and the parliamentary debate, help explain the objectifying of representation, but that, because genres are never fixed and closed, they also allow moments of escape from generic characteristics and thus, in the cases examined, potential for de-objectifying the humane.
Society is a self-producing entity, which creates and recreates itself in frames of existing collective consciousness. Collective framesoperate like social matrices and influence importantly the formation of images about the past. In order to recreate itself, a societyneeds a special point of reference. The production of discourses is a fundamental way to preserve mnemonic communities and transmit means for value systems’ formation. Discourses represent a generalized sum representing specific and frame-narratives, which is based on the prior guiding values and those beliefs and ideas the society has about itself. It is noteworthy to mention that society assesses itself, as well as other societies and events according to those beliefs and ideas. The subject of this study is Georgian and Abkhazian discourses that these two conflict-torn societies have about 1992-1993 years armed conflict. The research is based on an analysis of biographical- narrative interviews given by the witnesses of the war and person directly involved in combat. The analysis of the Georgian and Abkhaz narratives is paramount especially for two reasons: 1) narratives allow for the possibility for reconstruction of the past and 2) narratives shape the collective imaginations about the future and describe the degree of invariability or variability of a societal value system through the time continuum. National narratives represent a fundamental aspect of national identity and provide a group with fundamental ideas about its past and its role and mission in the world.Narratives highly influence the formation of interpretative and the attitudinal mindset of the individuals. Also, they affect reflective processes, which influence individual cognitive-emotional system and is reflected in the narrations. The research demonstrates the mainstream, therefore the most influential, central narrative models about 1992-1993 Georgian-Abkhaz conflict. Besides, this study underlines the implications of side-narrative models, which are the branches produced on the ground of central narrative templates.This research examines Georgian and Abkhaz biographical narrative interviews, particularly, the textual representations of theseinterviews, that is, in interview transcripts. Methodological approach of narrative analysis opens the window of opportunity foridentifying and defining what sort of discourses exist in Abkhaz, as well as in Georgian societies about the conflict. Based on interview analyses, this study demonstrates narrative constructing elements (the four-component structure of narratives), the leading and produced narratives about the 1992-1993 Georgian-Abkhaz armed conflict are reflected in the Georgian and Abkhaz mnemonic communities, which is the representation of chosen trauma in Abkhazian narratives and what is the importance given to the narrations about “victimhood” in the creation of group identity.
In post-colonial states, in particular sub-Saharan african, an appeal to the historical past for the construction of national identity acquires great importance. In particular, it becomes important due to the failure of attempts to copy political models based on European theories and experience and therefore turning to "neotraditionalism" as an ideological basis in attempts to rally citizens around authorities. What makes it possible is the eclecticism of public consciousness and collective picture of the world generated by colonialism and strengthened by the transformations of the postcolonial era. Neotraditional relationships, of course, do not absorb all the diversity of types of relationships in socially and culturally very multi-layered postcolonial societies. However, it should be noted that today, they find areas of implementation in public consciousness and practice, and there is even a tendency to expand these areas.
Toplumsal bellek, devletlerin yüzleşmekten ve hesaplaşmaktan kaçındıkları sakıncalı geçmişleri ile karanlık miraslarına meydan okuyan mücadele alanları sunmaktadır. Bu açıdan bellek, özellikle devletlerin ötekileri olarak konumlanan toplumsal grupların karşı karşıya kaldıkları insan kaynaklı felaketlerin kamuoyuna aktarımında merkezî bir rol oynamaktadır. Makalede, geçmişteki felaketlere ilişkin doğrudan deneyimi veya tanıklığı olmayan bireylerin aracılı bellek aktarımı olarak tanımlanan "protez bellek" yoluyla nasıl dolaylı tanıklar haline gelebileceği tartışılmaktadır. Bu bağlamda, belleğin gerçek deneyimden ve tanıklıktan kopabileceği ön kabulüyle hafıza aktivizminin dolaylı tanıklığın sınırlarını genişletebilme yolları ele alınmaktadır. İhtilaflı geçmişlere yönelik devletlerin resmî hafızasızlaştırma söylemlerine ve uygulamalarına karşıt bir alan olarak hafıza aktivizmi, dolaylı tanık haline getirdiği bireylere hem bir siyasi yükümlülük yüklemekte hem de suç ortaklığının ihtimallerini hatırlatmaktadır. Bunu inceleyebilmek için Türkiye'deki bir hafıza aktivizmi örneği olarak Hakikat, Adalet ve Hafıza Merkezi seçilmiştir. Makale, bu örnek üzerinden dolaylı tanıklık alanının protez bellek inşasıyla beraber nasıl kurulduğuna odaklanmaktadır.
For the lives of many in Ireland, commemoration and memorialisation are common parts of life. Representations and the ways in which narratives of the past are used make a difference in the focus and direction of everyday life. This becomes even more relevant in post-conflict Northern Ireland, where the reproduction of the past and its related narratives carry significance for contemporary politics and society. Everyday references to the past abound in social narratives and references from history retain a centrality in people’s political consciousness and thinking often going to structure current political debates and directly influence the future.
This article considers the (partial) “exclusion” or “self-exclusion” of the “complex heritage” descendants from the “inheritance” of the official narratives of national history. As a rule, such discourses rely on antagonistic logic. In the article, the idea of “complex heritage” descendants denotes people whose family history includes both representatives of mutually exclusive groups (from the point of view of different public discourses of memory). When any single discourse is dominant in the public space or in a competition between antagonistic discourses of national history, descendants of “complex heritage” must independently cope with the emerging internal tension and discomfort (if they arise). In this article, in the context of common European trends, the author shows and analyses different options for such reactions with reference to competing discourses of national history in Russia, i. e., “Triumph” (Victory in the Great Patriotic War) and “Tragedy” (the era of political repression), as well as the most massive public practice of memory dedicated to the Great Patriotic War heroes: the civil event known as the “Immortal Regiment”. The analysis refers to forty indepth interviews conducted by the author in 2021–2023 with descendants of the repressed from the third, fourth, and further generations (as well as those who fought and showed themselves differently in the past). The author relies on the concept of antagonistic memory, supplemented by the ideas of Ts. Todorov on the principles of working with the “difficult past”, the theory of post-memory by M. Hirsch and others. As a result of the research, the author draws the following conclusions: first, the experience of “exclusion” from national history due to the lack of blood ancestors that give the right for “inclusion” into the “fundamental myth of the nation” really exists; second, in the conditions of (even unequal) competition of antagonistic discourses, the descendants of the “complex heritage” find themselves constrained between the narrow limits of each of them. At the same time, the need to meet externally set criteria and the impossibility of doing this lead to resistance to the imposed public antagonistic models of understanding the past; finally, those “excluded” from national history in one or different interpretations thereof, the descendants collect, preserve, and transmit their family histories as “heritage” in the full diversity and inconsistency, as life itself, and the circumstances in which their ancestors were placed.
In this article, the authors analyze the unique features of the United States' "monumental" policy in relation to the conflicts of the Cold War and the associated memorial and commemorative spaces within the metropolitan region. Specifically, the authors focus on the two Cold War conflicts that are commemorated on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. — the Korean War (1950-1953) and the Vietnam War (19641975). The Vietnam Veterans Memorial (1982) and the Korean War Veterans Memorial (1995) are among the monumental objects that commemorate these conflicts, along with the Three Soldiers Monument (1984) and the Vietnam Women's Memorial (1993), which were later added to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. To examine the evolution and specific characteristics of the American "monumental" policy regarding the history of the Cold War, the authors employed various sources, including artifacts of "monumental" policy such as monuments, memorial complexes, and architectural structures; official documents on monumental projects; official websites of memorials and their funds; materials on planning, construction, and preservation of memorials; memoirs and interviews of architects; articles in the media; opinion polls; reviews from visitors to monumental objects. By tracing the history of the creation of these monumental objects, the authors aim to evaluate the degree of influence of civil society on official memory politics and to understand how assessments of Cold War conflicts have evolved in the United States.
This article analyzes the distinctive forms that collective memories take in the age of globalization. It studies the transition from national to cosmopolitan memory cultures. Cosmopolitanism refers to a process of ‘internal globalization’ through which global concerns become part of local experiences of an increasing number of people. Global media representations, among others, create new cosmopolitan memories, providing new epistemological vantage points and emerging moral-political interdependencies. The
article traces the historical roots of this transformation and outlines the theoretical foundations for the emergence of cosmopolitan memories through an examination of how the Holocaust has been remembered in Germany, Israel and the USA in the course of the last fifty years. It is precisely the abstract nature of ‘good and evil’ that symbolizes the Holocaust, which contributes to the extra-territorial quality of cosmopolitan memory. As such, memories of the Holocaust contribute to the creation of a common European cultural memory.
This article analyzes the distinctive forms that collective memories take in the age of globalization. It studies the transition from national to cosmopolitan memory cultures. Cosmopolitanism refers to a process of `internal globalization' through which global concerns become part of local experiences of an increasing number of people. Global media representations, among others, create new cosmopolitan memories, providing new epistemological vantage points and emerging moral-political interdependencies. The article traces the historical roots of this transformation and outlines the theoretical foundations for the emergence of cosmopolitan memories through an examination of how the Holocaust has been remembered in Germany, Israel and the USA in the course of the last fifty years. It is precisely the abstract nature of `good and evil' that symbolizes the Holocaust, which contributes to the extra-territorial quality of cosmopolitan memory. As such, memories of the Holocaust contribute to the creation of a common European cultural memory.
Britain's outstanding military achievement in the First World War has been eclipsed by literary myths. Why has the Army's role on the Western Front been so seriously misrepresented? This 2002 book shows how myths have become deeply rooted, particularly in the inter-war period, in the 1960s, and in the 1990s. The outstanding 'anti-war' influences have been 'war poets', subalterns' trench memoirs, the book and film of All Quiet on the Western Front, and the play Journey's End. For a new generation in the 1960s the play and film of Oh What a Lovely War had a dramatic effect, while more recently Blackadder has been dominant. Until more recently, historians had either reinforced the myths, or had failed to counter them. This book follows the intense controversy from 1918 to the present, and concludes that historians are at last permitting the First World War to be placed in proper perspective.
How war has been remembered collectively is the central question in this volume. War in the twentieth century is a vivid and traumatic phenomenon which left behind it survivors who engage time and time again in acts of remembrance. This volume, containing essays by outstanding scholars of twentieth-century history, focuses on the issues raised by the shadow of war in this century. The behaviour, not of whole societies or of ruling groups alone, but of the individuals who do the work of remembrance, is discussed by examining the traumatic collective memory resulting from the horrors of the First World War, the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War, and the Algerian War. By studying public forms of remembrance, such as museums and exhibitions, literature and film, the editors have succeeded in bringing together a volume which demonstrates that a popular kind of collective memory is still very much alive.
How war has been remembered collectively is the central question in this volume. War in the twentieth century is a vivid and traumatic phenomenon which left behind it survivors who engage time and time again in acts of remembrance. This volume, containing essays by outstanding scholars of twentieth-century history, focuses on the issues raised by the shadow of war in this century. The behaviour, not of whole societies or of ruling groups alone, but of the individuals who do the work of remembrance, is discussed by examining the traumatic collective memory resulting from the horrors of the First World War, the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War, and the Algerian War. By studying public forms of remembrance, such as museums and exhibitions, literature and film, the editors have succeeded in bringing together a volume which demonstrates that a popular kind of collective memory is still very much alive.
By focusing on issues of identity, this study offers a radically new approach to the understanding and explanation of international relations. The text critiques dominant approaches to identity in international relations and highlights the complexity of forms of identification and allegiance in the contemporary world. The text raises issues and concerns common to many areas of the social sciences. Student involvement throughout the book's production has ensured that the book is written in an accessible style. It will therefore appeal to a wide readership.
Bradley A. Thayer is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota—Duluth.
I am grateful to Mlada Bukovansky, Stephen Chilton, Christopher Layne, Michael Mastanduno, Roger Masters, Paul Sharp, Alexander Wendt, Mike Winnerstig, and Howard Wriggins for their helpful comments. I thank Nathaniel Fick, David Hawkins, Jeremy Joseph, Christopher Kwak, Craig Nerenberg, and Jordana Phillips for their able research assistance. Finally, I wish to acknowledge the generous support of the Earhart Foundation, and Ingrid Merikoski and Antony Sullivan in particular, and the University of Minnesota, which allowed me to complete my research.
1. See Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (New York: Knopf, 1998).
2. Wilson has pursued this goal since 1975, most recently in ibid., pp. 8-14, 197-228; Roger D. Masters, "The Biological Nature of the State," World Politics, Vol. 35, No. 2 (January 1983), pp. 189-190; and Albert Somit, "Human Nature as the Central Issue in Political Philosophy," in Elliott White, ed., Sociobiology and Human Politics (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath, 1981), pp. 167-180.
3. Ethology—the study of animal behavior—is significant as well, particularly the concept of evolutionary stable strategies, which was introduced by J. Maynard Smith and G.R. Price, "The Logic of Animal Conflict," Nature, November 2, 1973, pp. 15-18. This has informed such important scholarship as Robert Axelrod and William D. Hamilton's finding of the importance of reciprocation or tit-for-tat strategies for cooperation. See Axelrod and Hamilton, "The Evolution of Cooperation," Science, March 27, 1981, pp. 1390-1396; Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984), chap. 3; and John Maynard Smith, Evolution and the Theory of Games (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982).
4. Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979).
5. For the sake of simplicity, I discuss the "evolutionary process" even though four processes are actually at work: random genetic drift, migration, mutation, and natural selection. For discussion of these processes, see Theodosius Dobzhansky, Genetics of the Evolutionary Process (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970); John Maynard Smith, The Theory of Evolution (Harmondsworth, United Kingdom: Penguin, 1958); Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982); and Elliott Sober, Philosophy of Biology (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1993). Sexual selection is sometimes considered a fifth mechanism of evolution. See Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, Vol. 1 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981[1871]), pp. 256-279.
6. I stress that they are critical components but not the totality of the realist argument. In addition, evolutionary theory can be used to explain other types of human behavior.
7. Both will improve the theory. On the desirability of constructing verifiable scientific explanations, see Gary King, Robert O. Keohane, and Sidney Verba, Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 15. Stephen Van Evera argues that better theories have broad explanatory range. See Van Evera, Guide to Methods for Students of Political Science (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997), p. 18.
8. Gideon Rose also does this by combining elements of realism and neorealism. Rose, "Neoclassical Realism and Theories of Foreign Policy," World Politics, Vol. 51, No. 1 (October 1998), pp. 144-172.
9. Roger D. Masters, The Nature of Politics (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989); Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt, Human Ethology (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1989); and Wilson, Consilience, pp. 8-14, 197-228. See also Richard D. Alexander, The Biology of Moral Systems (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1987); and Francis Fukuyama, The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order (New York: Free Press, 1999).
10. Masters, "The Biological Nature of the State," pp. 185-189.
11. Albert Somit and Steven A. Peterson, Darwinism, Dominance, and Democracy: The Biological Bases of Authoritarianism (Greenwich, Conn.: Praeger, 1997). See also Laura L. Betzig, Despotism and Differential Reproduction: A Darwinian View of History (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1986).
12. I do not critique these arguments here. Both theorists have been widely criticized, perhaps most perceptively by Kenneth N. Waltz...
Throughout the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth century, and despite significant contestation, various official and artistic genres, under varying degrees of state control, have been instruments of national cultural formation. Map making, landscape painting and photography, the writing of epics and novels, theatrical performances and musical compositions (among other genres) have been vehicles of 'national narratives', the temporal frames within which states have sought nation-state status as coherent cultural as well as territorial entities. Beginning with an analysis of the role of music in aiding and abetting state nation building projects, the essay's primary emphasis is on the political challenge to the dominant narrative of American nation-building provided by John Coltrane's jazz improvisations and Robert Altman's film making.
This article describes the basic framework of the field of sociology of memory. It offers an overview of themes and issues around (1) the social aspects of individual memory; (2) collective memories; and (3) cultural attitudes towards memory. Such issues are relevant today from the perspective of sociology of time, and the author demonstrates some theoretical problems that arise and some directions in which they can be further developed. But such issues are also relevant in social discourse and in shaping individual and collective identities: their comprehension helps to investigate continuity and discontinuity in social life, as well as current conflicts and cultural ties.
Preface. Introduction. The Modernist Paradigm 1. The Rise of Classical Modernism Part I. Varieties of Modernism 2. The Culture of Industrialism 3. Capitalism and Nationalism 4. State and Nation 5. Political Messianism 6. Invention and Imagination Part II. Critics and Alternatives 7. Primordialism and Perennialism 8. Ethno-symbolism 9. Beyond Modernism? Conclusion Problems, Paradigms and Prospects
There has recently been a renaissance of interest in ideological analysis, and this is to be greatly welcomed. However, there is a noticeable lack of concern with international political ideologies, a position that mirrors the pernicious disciplinary dichotomy between political theory and international relations (IR) theory. In this essay I offer a critique of this state-centric understanding of ideology, and consequently offer an extension of Michael Freeden's morphological approach. In order to demonstrate the utility of this extension, I offer an innovative analysis of contemporary political realism, an ideology that has played an important role in recent US academic and policy debates, most notably in the current Bush administration. It is argued that much contemporary realism is conceptually sovereign-centric rather than, as is commonly assumed, state-centric. The other two central concepts are anarchy and power.
Members of national and ethnic groups share a common identity, and one might ask why this would be the case. While both scholars and non‐scholars might point to ancestry and culture as causal factors, this article argues that collective memory is the key. Both recent events and the distant past can play an important role. Cambodia represents a good example, since people there have a collective memory of conflict with Vietnam, and see their historical experience as continuing into the present.
This paper is concerned with the fortunes of the pre-revolutionary, Pahlavi nationalist narrative in post-revolutionary Iran. The study analyses and compares pre- and post-revolutionary school textbooks with the aim of demonstrating that, for all its revolutionary and Islamic-universalist hyperbole, the Islamic Republic of Iran remained committed to the Pahlavi dynasty's conception of the ‘immemorial Iranian nation’ (or the ‘Aryan hypothesis’) as it was first articulated by European scholars of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Post-revolutionary Iran clung to the European/Pahlavi master narrative of Iranian history, its very basic ‘story line’. It was, therefore, subject to the same evolution, the same dialectic of remembering and forgetting, the same successive deformations, and the vulnerability to the very same manipulation and appropriation. This study, then, attempts to establish that the Islamic Republic's apparent shift from ‘Iran Time’ to ‘Islam Time’, though it reaches far beyond Iranian borders, nevertheless remains wedded to, and embedded in, the dominant European, secular traditions of the Pahlavi era. Islamic consciousness in Iran does not in any way constitute the basis for an alternative myth to the national myth. Rather, it adds Islamic terminology to the very same myth. Political Islam thus remains within the confines of Iranian nationalism. It is articulated in the framework of the symbols of Iranian nationalism, endowing them with a meaning that is supposedly religious.
This article takes reactions to atrocities committed against ethnic Chinese during the riots that swept Indonesia in May 1998 as a case study by which to analyse the politics of nationalism in Chinese cyberspace. By focusing on Chinese website activity during the weeks that led up to an unauthorised demonstration on the Indonesian embassy by students from Peking University, it provides insights into how the Internet can be used to disseminate information, organise political action and express dissent in an authoritarian society. It concludes, however, that this case combined with more recent examples indicates that cyber-politics is more likely to be used to promote nationalism than liberal democracy, the former being far more difficult to suppress than the latter for a regime whose legitimacy depends increasingly on nationalist claims.
Whether or not nationalism is an ideology is a question that can be illuminated by a study of its conceptual structure. Core and adjacent concepts of nationalism are examined within the context of liberal, conservative and fascist ideologies, contexts that respectively encourage particular ideational paths within nationalist argument, while discouraging others. Employing a morphological analysis of ideological configurations, it is argued that various nationalisms may appear as distinct thin-centred ideologies, but are more readily understood as embellishments of, and sustainers of, the features of their host ideologies.
Is there case study evidence of a relationship between the socialconstruction of ethnic identities and the probability of ethnic war? Themere observation that ethnic identities are socially constructed doesnot by itself explain ethnic violence and may not even be particularlyrelevant. Our purpose here is to see if we can reject the nullhypothesis that the social construction of ethnicity has little or nobearing on the likelihood of ethnic violence. Our procedure is toexamine closely the narratives of expert observers of some highlyviolent episodes of ethnic relations. Although a different set of casestudies might yield different overall conclusions, the narratives weexamined contain useful clues about the mechanisms that link identityconstruction and ethnic violence.
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